2009-09-26

About editing: Always just cut the text if you have to, he advised, never add to what's there.

About responding to critics en masse in a published venue: When answering letters written in response to something you've written, don't use the authors' names. Just lay out their common themes. That way you won't get caught up personally and can just stick to the ideas.

2009-09-20

In The Black Swan--which was published in 2007 and foreshadows/explains the economic meltdown of 2008--Nassim Nicholas Taleb has strong opinions about some well-known professors of finance & economics including Myron Scholes, Stephen Ross and Martin Shubik.

This bit is from page 280:

It was symptomatic that almost all people who attacked my thinking attacked a deformed version of it . . . . Some even had to change my biography. At a panel in Lugano, Myron Scholes once got in to a state of rage, and went after a transformed version of my ideas. I could see the pain in his face.

Once, in Paris, a prominent member of the mathematical establishment, who invested part of his lifeon some minute sub-sub-property of the Gaussian, blew a fuse--right when I showed empirical evidence of Black Swans in markets. He turned red with anger, had difficulty breathing, and started hurling insults at me for having descrated the institution, lacking pudeur (modesty); he shouted "I am a member of the Academy of Science!" to give more strength to his insults. (The French translation of my book was out of stock the next day.)

My best episode was with Steve Ross, an economist perceived to be an intellectual far superior to Scholes and Merton, and deemed a formidable debater, gave rebuttal to my ideas by signaling small errors or approximations in my presentation, such as Markowitz was not the first to ..." thus certifying that he had no answer to my main point.

The insightful scholar Martin Shubik, who held that the degree of excessive abstraction of these models, a few steps beyond necessity, makes them totally unusable, found himself ostracized, a common fate for dissenters.

2009-09-15

Here's the thing: if Democrats do not rise up quickly to denounce ACORN--and strip away its government funding--it seems to me that President Obama and the whole Democratic party will be in deep, deep trouble. And the tipping point could come very quickly.

not one ACORN employee seemed to even flinch when presented with the ridiculous scenario of a pimp and a prostitute trying to get a mortgage to house a dozen or so underage El Salvadoran child-prostitutes. They just oozed seamlessly into conjecture about whether or not a child prostitute could be considered a “dependent” for tax purposes. What do these employees hear on a daily basis that this scenario was just another problem that needed fixing?

2009-09-11

The ACORN staffers in Baltimore were unfazed by the pair's plan to conduct child prostitution. From the Washington Post:

BALTIMORE -- The group ACORN has fired two employees who were seen on hidden-camera video giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman who pretended to be a prostitute.

. . . On the video, a man and woman visiting ACORN's Baltimore office asked about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. An ACORN employee advised the woman to list her occupation as "performance artist."

The pair also claimed they planned to employ teenage girls from central America as prostitutes, and an ACORN employee suggested that up to three of the girls could be claimed as dependents, according to transcripts of the video posted online by conservative activist James O'Keefe.

O'Keefe [said] that he was shocked by the ACORN employees' helpfulness.

Mr. Obama began by depicting a crisis in the entitlement state, noting that "our health-care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers," especially Medicare. . . .

On this score he's right. Medicare's unfunded liability—the gap between revenues and promised benefits—is currently some $37 trillion over the next 75 years. Yet the President uses this insolvency as an argument to justify the creation of another health-care entitlement, this time for most everyone under age 65. It's like a variation on the old Marx Brothers routine: "The soup is terrible and the portions are too small."

Many gloves these days come with oil already injected into the leather. When that's the case, you shouldn't apply extra oil to the glove.

Professional shortstops and second basemen tend to use smaller gloves than I had thought (around 11.5 inches).

Professional infielders (except perhaps first basemen) don't insert their hand fully into their glove. They leave the bottom of the hand visible (the inch or so that includes the base of the thumb). This is partly to prevent wrist injuries when diving for ground balls so the glove can fall off rather than breaking or spraining the wrist.

Many advanced players put both the ring finger and the pinky finger into the last finger hole. The middle finger goes into the ring finger hole and the index finger goes in the middle finger hole. This helps to create a larger pocket.

Some pros now have "flared" corners on their gloves (the corners at the ends of the thumb and pinky). This lets the open glove cover a larger area, when compared to a glove with corners that curl around the ball.

A quick way to break in a glove: smear a small dabs of shaving cream on several areas of the glove (the inside of the pocket, the back of the fingers [and the palm of the glove?] and put it in a 300 degree oven for five minutes.

Some pros now have "flared" corners on their gloves (the corners at the ends of the thumb and pinky). This lets the open glove cover a larger area when compared to a glove that has more curl around the ball at the corners. But some pros prefer the non-flared gloves.

One way to build up your arm strength: cut a slit in a tennis ball, fill it with pennies, seal it up with duct tape, and play catch (gently) for 10 minutes or so on a regular basis. Some caveats: don't throw too hard or too far, don't do it for too long and don't do this with your best glove, because it causes extra wear and tear on the glove.

My friend spent more money than he had planned to, but I think he got something that suits him much better and will last longer than the one he had originally planned to buy.

Dear Dutch -- This article is one of the best pieces of analysis and explanation that I have read on any topic, ever. Please read it. I hope you will incorporate parts of it in your thinking and in your public statements on health care. After you read it, I'd like to discuss it with you. Please call me on my cell at 410-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you.

To everyone else out there, please read the article and send a copy of it to your Congressman.

By the way, Dutch has scheduled a town hall conference call for September 21st at 7:30 PM. Details such as the call-in number and passcode are TBD.

[his] car [to] be equipped with a steering wheel interlock device, a mobile breathalyzer that requires the driver to blow into a tube to prove he is not intoxicated before starting his vehicle and at random times while on the road . . . 85 hours of community service in Baltimore [City].

The article also mentions suspension of Moxley's driver's license for a year, but the article doesn't make clear whether that is for the 2009 charge or the 2005 charge.

Moxley really needs to resign.

A good question from ASA John Mitchell:

“How many bites at the apple will he get before he goes to jail?”

Here are some details of Mr. Moxley's drunk driving record from his Wikipedia page:

In 2005 Councilman Moxley was sentenced to year of supervised probation for driving under the influence.

According to a Baltimore City Police report, Moxley was involved in a four vehicle accident on Route 40, near the 400 block of N. Pulaski Street in west Baltimore. . . [he] failed to stop at a red traffic signal at Rt 40 and N. Pulaski Street striking a vehicle. . .

Authorities say Moxley failed a field sobriety test and refused to take a breathalyzer.

*Bryan seems like a very nice guy, but his blog photo has a definite Lex Luthor look to it.